Holmes and Watson

Sorry for the delayed commencement of keyboard activity, but your humble and sedentary correspondent got his sorry butt to the gym this morning...

Blue Monster Blues - Quite the yawnfest down there in Miami, no?  David Hyde of the Sun-Sentinel (their website is far too annoying to bestow a valuable link upon) feels that way, though the only portion I can share with you is Shack's excerpt:

Once upon a time, golfers were the most capitalistic athletes of them all. They walked

onto an unruly course like a lion onto the Serengeti plain, needing to kill their next meal to eat compared to the guaranteed money of other sports. 

But now? With endorsement deals and faux-tournaments like these World Golf Championship affairs? No wonder everyone's happy. Even Stephen Gallacher, the resolute Scot hit two shots into the water and managed to shoot 4-over par – just on the 18th hole. 

He was 12-over for the day. Last place. And, sure, he was upset with his game. But being upset comes with parameters at this tournament. 

"The good news is I can work through this weekend,'' he said.

 That's because there's not just guaranteed money for showing up at World Golf events like this. No one gets cut. Do they all get trophies for participating, too, like a Little League team?

Not everyone was happy...for instance, while on the stationary bike I caught The Donald whining that the Tour had set his course up to play too easy.  More substantively, here's Geoff''s take on that which we can't read for ourselves:

The Sun-Sentinel's Dave Hyde explains what came through on television during early rounds of the WGC Cadillac: Doral's lack of energy and fan attendance at an event once so well-attended and buzzworthy. 

Hyde plays off of Thomas Bjorn's WD after nine (for personal reasons) but still earning the Dane $42,000 of unofficial money. Hyde digs deeper and gets to the lack of edge: limited-field events with no cut do not have the same urgency as a traditional full field event. He even invokes socialism late in the piece.

True that, and I mean all of it.  But it's also the worst of one dimensional Florida golf on display, water and sand, rinse and repeat as necessary.   I've noted previously in this space my desire to play Seminole, the Donald Ross classic, because I'm curious as to how he makes golf interesting in that environment.

But the WGC events are especially tedious, and removing the threat of a cut is one reason why.  Week in, week out, it's the cut that lends the narrative urgency to Friday's coverage (and Thursday to a lesser extent), as nobody likes to be embarrassed on television.  But the WGC's are the poster-child for all the excesses of the all-exempt Tour, limited field money-grabs played on typically dreadful venues (think Firestone).

Now there was one guy that tried to bring some excitement and levity into the proceedings... and if you missed it I'm happy to share:

Look at the classic release of the front hip, the perfectly in-balance footwork and the textbook position of the body facing directly down the target line.  Is there any doubt as to why he's the best player in the game?

Ever the critic, Shack opines that Rory is no match for the all-time greats, such as Terrible Tommy Bolt:

But the equipment was so different back then, Geoff.  Or, as a modern comparison, he suggests our Sergio:

I know, it's just amazing how Sergio creates that lag.  But remember, Sergio was using a 5-iron and Rory a 3-iron, a completely different shot.  By the way, the link above is to a gallery of old photos of classic club tosses, a number of which involve players not typically associated with the anger thing.

And, I should add, that Rory has a signature move I've never seen from Sergio:

Now Rory shows a command we could pray fro in Sergio, as he explains:

"Felt good at the time," McIlroy said after 2-under-par 70 left him 8 shots out of the lead. "Look, I just let frustration get the better of me. It was heat of the moment, and I mean, if it had been any other club I probably wouldn't have but I didn't need a 3‑iron for the rest of the round, so I thought, why not? 

" … Looking back at it, it isn't one of my proudest moments. … I wouldn't encourage anyone to do it; especially if there's kids watching at home. First of all, it's expensive, and second of all, you shouldn't do it."

Rors, can you elaborate on that second reason?  Oh, never mind...  Goose, gander....

There were some funny reactions, for instance you'll be relieved to know that Jimmy Connors was quite OK with it.  I know, I shocked as well... but my favorite was a guy named Chris Chaney with the delightful twitter handle of @Wrong_Fairway who does the ProTracer thing with it:

We like funny.  Abd before leaving the Ulsterman and Doral, how's about this infrared video of the lad posted by @NoLayingUp.

One last Doral note.  Bubba shot a 3-under 69 yesterday, without the benefit of a single birdie.  In fact, he made par at all fourteen of the Par-3 and 4's, and made one bogey and two eagles on the three-shotters.  You don't see that every day...

Getting Komfortable - Beth Ann Nichols posted this on our favorite young lady:

The day Lydia Ko rose to No. 1 in the world, she was a bit “nonplussed” about the honor, according to swing coach David Leadbetter. 

“She was more upset she didn’t win the tournament (in Ocala) than happy that she was No. 1,” Leadbetter said. Ko lost her footing in a bunker on the 71st hole at the inaugural Coates Golf Championship and mis-hit a hybrid. In hindsight, Ko, 17, of New Zealand, realized a safe 6-iron would’ve worked fine. Na Yeon Choi took home the trophy; runner-up Ko supplanted Inbee Park as No. 1. 

Five weeks and two professional titles later, Leadbetter said Ko is “warming to the fact that this is pretty cool.”

 I would rather this had come at a later time, after I felt that she was, in fact, the best player out there.  But she's posted two wins after that disappointment above and her play at Royal Melbourne was something special.  But better to sit back and see how she handles the majors...

Mostly I just wanted to direct you to this amusing Josh Sens send-up of Lydia's future therapy career.  Here's just one little tease involving our favorite Shakespearean hero: 

March 1, 2028

8 a.m. Arrive to find first patient, Mr. Furyk, in foyer. Seems grumpy. Says he’s been

waiting 13 years to see me. Resist urge to point out that it took him twice that long to line up putts. Oh, snap! Session consumed by talk of missed opportunities, male-pattern baldness and sublimated resentment at father for teaching him that swing. In waning moments, otherwise high-functioning patient appears to lose self-confidence and focus. Mr. Furyk? Mr. Furyk!?! Prescription: 5-Hour Energy Drink. Love this job. So great to be able to make a difference!

I'm relieved that she wants to be a therapist, because if she makes good on her threat and quites at age thirty I'll need one.

If I Were A Betting Man - We recently blogged the Royal St. Georges' membership vote to allow women members, and briefly speculated on other dominoes.  As you know, in the U.K. one can lay a few quid on just about any proposition of interest, so we shouldn't be surprised by this Martin Dempster item from The Scotsman:

FRESH pressure has been heaped on the two men-only Scottish golf clubs on the Open Championship rota after Royal St George’s voted to allow women members. 

The Kent club’s decision, which received 90 per cent backing from its membership, leaves the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers at Muirfield and Royal Troon as the only male-only clubs on the list used by the R&A for golf’s oldest major. 

A leading bookmaker has made Royal Troon the more likely of the two to be next to admit women members, with the Ayrshire club being offered at 1/10 to no longer be a men-only bastion by the end of the year compared to 8/15 for Muirfield.

Great minds think alike, though I expressed that sentiment less quantitatively though quite a bit more snarkily.

Stuff Lying Around

Lots of this and that sort of items, so let's dive in, shall we?

Doral, Torched - And our arsonist was an unlikely sort:

J.B. Holmes never liked the old Blue Monster at Doral because he thought it was too

easy for a World Golf Championship. 

He said this with a straight face Thursday after a 10-under 62 that tied the tournament record at the Cadillac Championship, gave him a four-shot lead and left the rest of this world-class field to wonder just how he managed.

But only torched by some...Alex Mysers has some perspective on J.B.'s rounds, as well as comments from a jury of his peers:

Secondly, while conditions weren't particularly difficult on Thursday, the scoring average for the field was 73.39 -- meaning Holmes played his round in nearly 11 and a half fewer strokes. To put that in perspective, Jim Furyk's 59 at the 2013 BMW Championship was 12.1 shots better than the field that day, putting Holmes' 62 in the same ballpark.

It was crazy good and I thought it warranted an official 59-watch.  Here's just a sample of the praise:

"Ten under? You're joking," Shane Lowry said after a hard-fought 71.

Jim McCabe thinks His Donaldness will be pleased:

The Donald wants tougher than tough, and Holmes made it look easier than easy. But when Round 1 of the WGC-Cadillac Championship was over with, there were plenty of reasons why The Donald could breathe easy. His Blue Monster was not the pushover one might think, based on Holmes’ score. 

Here are 10 things about Round 1 that The Donald should focus on: 

1. The field average was 73.402.

2. Maintaining its ferocious reputation, the par-4 18th was toughest, at a 4.603 field average. Only three birdies were made – by Alexander Levy, Charley Hoffman and Ross Fisher.

 If No. 18 had been a prize fight, the ref woulda stopped it.  The surpise was less the number of tee balls in the water than how far right the guys were bailing.  Good thing it's a small field, cause thetre was lots of incoming on the first fairway.

Think the money is too easy out there?  How about $42 grand for eight holes?

Thomas Bjorn picked up a quick paycheck Thursday. 

Bjorn, playing in the first round of the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Doral, withdrew from the no-cut tournament after only eight holes – and earned $42,000 for his trouble.

Bjorn hit his tee shot on the par-3 ninth into the water and called it a day afterward. The New York Post’s Mark Cannizzaro said via Twitter it was due to personal reasons.

Personal reasons?  Hey, at least Rory came up with a phantom toothache... 

Adam Scott seems to have spent his winter vacation productively, producing a male heir and learning the claw putting grip as well:

The former world No. 1 had five birdies, a bogey and one double bogey en route to a 2-under 70 Thursday at Trump National Doral. He had 27 putts, including nine one-putts and no three-putts. 

“I putted really good today I thought,” Scott said. “I kind of took everything off the range that had been feeling good and off the practice areas and put it in on the course, and it was pretty good. I certainly didn't feel like it was kind of a three‑month layoff round.

We should expect that he'll have days where he regresses, since he's never been a particularly good putter, even with the broomstick.   

WADA Ya Mean? - Say it isn't so....

Golf is scheduled to return to the Olympics at next year’s Rio Games, but according to

the World Anti-Doping Agency, the drug-enforcement policies followed by the sport’s biggest tour are still a problem. 

In an interview with Golf.com, David Howman, WADA’s director general, called on the PGA Tour to take the necessary steps to strengthen its “Anti-Doping Program Manual” in order to bring it into compliance with WADA’s Code. 

“There are gaps in the program, and that means someone might not be tested or might not be detected,” said Howman. “If you’re not smart, you’re not going to catch the cheats.”

Mr. Howman obviously doesn't understand the complexity of Commissioner Ratched's worldview (and bonus points for any reader that can identify the literary source of that bit), as golf is a game of gentlemen where we call penalties on ourselves (and would logically turn ourselves in for using PED's).  But this is as if it came from mine own keyboard:

Howman also joined those critical of the lack of transparency in the Tour’s administration of its drug-testing program, citing the PGA Tour’s recent suspension of Bhavik Patel, a 24-year-old Web.com Tour pro, for an undisclosed performance-enhancing drug violation. 

“We don’t know the substance he used and we don’t know the rationale behind the length of the sanctions,” said Howman of the Patel suspension. “It goes some of the way, but it actually creates more questions than it gives answers.”

What's this transparency you speak of, Sir?  Obviously the Tour does want to catch cheat, but only minnows...  Understand that and you'll understand all.

But the Tour has good reasons for it's colander-like program, with only the best interests of its players at heart:

Speaking in response to criticism from the World Anti-Doping Agency, Andy Levinson, the Tour's vice president for tournament administration and anti-doping, said drawing blood could have an adverse effect on performance. 

“Taking blood draws from golfers’ arms might impact performance if it caused a hematoma or a player suffered anemia given the fine motor skills required on certain golf shots,” Levinson said.

Really?  But this bit is spit-out-your-coffee hilarious:

According to Levinson, urine collection and testing covers a large percentage of the PGA Tour’s prohibited substances. To monitor human growth hormone, a substance prohibited by the Tour which some athletes use for recovery and is only detectable through blood testing, Levinson said the Tour relies on other methods, such as information or evidence that a player was using it. If a player was found to be in possession of a prohibited substance, for example, Levinson said, that would be a violation.

So they're going to rely on other evidence that a player is using, but avoid the procedure to find such information out.  Commissioner Schultz could not be reached for comment...

Authorized By Whom? - This is silly fun, Alex Myers' Phil Mickelson and the thumbs up: An Authorized History, wherein we learn much useful information such as this:

The thumbs-up sign dates back to ancient Rome, where emperors made the signal to convey if they thought a gladiator's life should be spared. But it has patriotic roots in this country. It's believed to have become popular in the U.S. during World War II, when fighter pilots used it as a way of communicating with ground crews that they were ready to take off. 

Phil Mickelson Sr. was a navy pilot. That just can't be a coincidence. 

Phil Jr. uses the move as a sign of appreciation for the hordes of fans that follow him at every golf tournament. And he uses it a lot.

That he does....As do other folks, though in this case I'm sure the recipient has seen other digits as well:

Distaff Nonsense - Shack goes on a micro-rant about the silly responses to Royal St. Georges allowing women members and the mostly unjustified juxtaposition with growing our game:

I'm sure you saw the usual stuff on social media and elsewhere about the great grow the

game statement from Royal St. George's in voting to admit women to their membership. 

It's mostly hogwash. Adding a few spry rich women certainly is a nice gesture, but it sure it's not going to grow the game. Now, if more of these high-end places like Royal St. George's were bringing in promising junior golfers, that would have an impact.

I've been saying much the same for years, and though symbolism matters, there's far more benefit, for example, from ANGC opening its gates to the Drive, Pitch and Putt competition than there is from admitting Condi Rice.  That said, both Geoff and I love this:

Unlike the Royal & Ancient, Royal St George’s has a junior section. The club currently has about 50 boys, and takes in about six new juniors per year. Checketts says girls may join the club that way, too. 

“The junior process tends to be faster so we may get some juniors (girls) in straight away. 

“We get juniors in quite quickly and get them involved and playing. We don’t really have an upper limit for juniors. We take as many as we can cope with.”

Now we're making some progress...

We've Waited This Long -  Twelve years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, I think waiting for the snow to melt is no biggie:

The highly anticipated public opening of Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point has finally arrived. Now, golfers just need the weather to cooperate.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump announced that people can start scheduling tee times at 10 a.m. on March 11 for the month of April (www.trumpferrypoint.com). The new course's official opening day is scheduled for April 1, which seems ambitious with all the snow that's been dumped on the New York area of late and no winter reprieve in sight.

Shack is shocked, shocked that there's gambling in Casablanca  city residents don't get a bigger break:

Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, NYC RESIDENT rate is $141 and $169.

NON-RESIDENT rate is $190.00 and $215.00.

As loyal readers know, I was lucky to play a preview round in October, and my thoughts are here.   Trump got a sweetheart deal from Bloomberg, bot for the abused taxpayers of NYC these greens fees will be the least of it.

Ritchie Rich - We hear simultaneously that the game is dying but that all sorts of unlikely folks have gotten themselves quite mad about golf.... both can be true I suppose, but it's always heartening to hear of folks discovering the joys of holding a golf club in hand.  Here's the latest of this genre, concerning Bob Ritchie, d/b/a Kid Rock:

Lately, Rock has been getting into golf. He was just accepted into Jack Nicklaus' private

Bear's Club, near Palm Beach, Florida. "If you told me five years ago I'd have to take my hat off and tuck my shirt in, I'd have slapped the taste out of your mouth," Rock says. "Now I'm like, 'Look at me, hair slicked back, shirt tucked in.' I'm like, 'What a fag!' "

Mr. Rock, we don't use the "F" word here at Unplayable Lies. Of course I skipped over this earlier in the piece:

Kid Rock stands outside puffing a cigar, his ponytail spilling out of an orange hunter's hat. "Welcome to L.A.!" he says, meaning Lower Alabama. "I thought you were coming yesterday. We got our days screwed up. We cooked fuckin' chitlins!"

We don't use that one either, unless we can't help ourselves...Now it turns out that Mr. Rock has something interesting to say out one Eldrick Woods:

Rock recently got some pointers at the range from Nicklaus himself, and he hit balls at Tiger Woods' nearby house. "Nice kid," Rock says. "A little bit of an Eminem and Axl Rose syndrome. Very reclusive, literal, and sometimes you feel a little bad for them. Sometimes they think the world's against them. You gotta loosen up, man! People are gonna talk shit. You just gotta enjoy it!"

Kid? Though I'm not exactly clear on the sense in which he hit balls at Tiger's house. . Was he at the house or was it, you know, his target?  But I digress...

But this leads us to a really fun piece from a most dubious of sources.  I was somewhere between surprised and mortified to learn that Rolling Stone is still publishing, as their account of a gang rape at the University of Virginia well apart at Usain Bolt speed.  But now they've turned their attention to our Tiger, and no doubt he'll feel serially violated.  I did like their lede graph:

Back in the days when Tiger Woods was an untouchable American icon, back in an era when he was winning major tournaments with steadfast regularity and was a high-profile pitchman for both luxury automobiles and Saul Goodman's preferred counterfeit watch brand, back when he was young and fresh-faced and seemed destined to shatter Jack Nicklaus' record, no one would have bothered to believe a journeyman professional making outrageous claims about him on a radio station in Lansing, Michigan.

You're right, it's not all that good....After watching all of Breaking Bad and diving into the prequel, I'm an easy mark for the Better Call Saul reference.  But it gets better:

At some point over the past few years, as his marriage broke down and his body broke down with it, Tiger Woods became something far weirder. To see those pictures of him wearing a skull mask at a skiing event in Italy to hide a missing front tooth, you couldn't help but wonder if he's veering into Michael Jackson territory

Michael Jackson territory? Someone pinch me....

He is, as Sports on Earth's Will Leitch wrote, firmly ensconced in his "freak show" phase; he now appears so far removed from normal life that it's getting more difficult to imagine he'll ever be an object of mainstream affection any time soon. In, say, 2002, it would have seemed utterly absurd to compare Tiger Woods and Mike Tyson; now it feels like an increasingly apt metaphor. The fact that he felt the need topublicly attack a biting satirical column by a legendary sportswriter best known for biting satire may have been the least self-aware and most humorless screed by an athlete who was never exactly known for his edginess. 

There is that freak-show angle to this that can't be denied, which lent Olsen's claims more weight than they probably deserved, given the lack of evidence behind them. There are, of course, people who are fascinated by the way mega-celebrity and competitive pressure can drain the human psyche; it's interesting to speculate how Woods might be handling the notion that the one thing he was always good at – the one thing he was physically and mentally constructed to be good at from a tender age – has spiraled completely out of his control. It almost feels novelistic, the way his life imploded all at once, like something out of, hell, a Dan Jenkins novel; but there's also something inherently depressing about it, too, for those of us who grew up watching Woods transform golf into something counterintuitively electric.

Freak Show phase? Mike Tyson? Too much fun for words... I've grabbed the best bits for sure, but do yourself a favor and read it out loud to a loved one.  

Today's TED Talk

I go to considerable effort and expense to be snowed in in Park City....only to find myself instead snowed in at home.  What's wrong with this picture?

But our favorite ex-PGA Prez is back and he's dishing, so pull up a chair and freshen that beverage....

I curled up in bed last evening with the new issue of SIG-Golf+, and...well, the cover will tell you where we're going with this:

That's reasonably clever though, given the byline, I'd have worked Ted Bishop in as a bishop, no?  It's a dreaded digital magazine, so excerpting will be a challenge, though others have provided some assistance.  The digital mag can be found here, and golf.com has two takes on it here and here.

 Now Ted wield an industrial-sized axe these days, so we'll need to take care to read between the lines.  But he ledes by explaining that the task force, or Task Force, was entirely his idea, conceived on the plane home from Scotland.  He seems to think this is something to be proud of, so thus far my BS detector has not hit the red zone.  

But how did three-sticks end up with a mulligan?  Here's Ted's take:

"What’s curious is how Love wound up as captain," Bishop penned. "A majority of the eight men who represented the players and past captains on the task force wanted Fred Couples to take the helm."

Hmmmmm....that doesn't help all that much as we need names.  Then there's this from Marika Washchyshyn (Vanna, I'd like to buy a vowel):

Bishop's column reads:

"It’s clear that Mickelson controlled the tenor of the task-force meetings. Last week,

when a reporter asked Love how he evolved from a task-force member to captain, Phil practically knocked down Davis to grab the microphone. Mickelson was quick to point out that Love had not lobbied for the job. He said Davis sees the big picture, has the experience and is a perfect fit. He also acknowledged that Love had made mistakes at Medinah and that he had learned from those mistakes. Phil capped his remarks by saying, “Davis will put us in a position to succeed rather than create obstacles to overcome.” Phil was clearly taking another shot at Watson." 

The PGA of America did not respond to requests for comment by press time. 

Could Couples, who Bishop claims held the popular vote, have walked away with the job had Mickelson not exerted his influence on the task force? When it came to the task force, it appeared to be 'Mickelson rule,' not majority.

The name seemingly missing from both Ted and Marika's accounting is Pete Bevaqua.  My operating assumption has been that Bevaqua put the kibosh on Freddie, not unreasonably understanding that Freddie being Freddie is an awkward fit for the Ryder Cup (think of the stories of Freddie at Medinah hanging with MJ and not answering his radio).  Still, it's got to be a tad awkward telling your task force that you're not much interested in what they think...

This bit seems to be the basis of Ted's contention that Phil had the conn:

OK, but Phil's not the only big name that will skip those events, though of course the Istanbul 8, including Tiger, will need to play the Fry's next year this Fall.  But the usually knowledgeable Doug Ferguson takes Phil and the entire Task Force, sorry for this folks, to task for sins against the Holy Emperor:

What's to keep Augusta National from following suit and no longer offering a spot in the Masters to winner? And if those tournaments go away, does the PGA Tour become even more of a closed shop and a time when it's hard to keep track of all the promising young Americans? 

Most disappointing is the silence of PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, except to commend the PGA of America for including his players in the process. It was just over a year ago that Finchem and former PGA president Ted Bishop shared the stage and boasted of a new era of cooperation between the two organizations.

Doug, you ignorant.....errr, let's not go there.  The wraparound schedule was a complete over-reach by Commissioner Ratched, and Phil makes a very good point.  But it's the naivete on display that most amuses me, as expecting a PGA of America task force to protect the interests of the PGA Tour ignores a wealth of real-world evidence.

And should the winner of the Sanderson's Farm Championship get an automatic invite to the Masters?  The current holder is Nick Taylor and I'll go way out on a limb and speculate that most of us wouldn't miss him in April....

Ted also tells a story of being on the 18th hole with Phil and Rickie at Celtic Manor during a practice round, presumably in leaky rainsuits, when out of the blue Phil mentioned that Bethpage Black would make a boss Ryder Cup venue...So here's how our Ted sees the captaincy playing out over the next few cycles:

Maybe, but that's quite the long con Phil has been running, and 2024 is still way off.  Stricker is no doubt a lock for Wisconsin and Phil is no doubt smart enough to tee himself up for a home game.

Color me skeptical that Freddie will be their guy for the 2018 road game, though I could see where Bevaqua might have used that as a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down, holding out the possibility that if Freddie shows personal growth as III's aide-de-camp in '16 he'll get the nod.  Easy enough to go another direction at a later time.

But to me the real question is whether Ted's case becomes conventional wisdom, that this was all orchestrated by our Phil.  And does Davis owe Phil such that he'll get extraordinary consideration for one of those four captain's picks (though I'm surprised that nobody has laid that change on Phil as well, since his chances of earning a spot seem to be increasingly remote)?

No doubt there will be some credit if it all comes together and the U.S. wins....  but where does this go if, despite the Task Force, continuity plans and the captain of Phil's dreams, the same guys show up in bred white and blue?

Mid-Week Meanderings

It's our weekly lull in the news cycle, but there's over-paid people to hold up to ridicule, so let's skip the preamble and dive in.

For A Dying Game, It Pays Awfully Well - We'll let Shack do the heavy lifting here, as he actually gets paid for this.  The impetus is the publishing of Ron Sirak's annual listing of the top earners in our game, and though Sirak's list includes money actually earned on the golf course, this list is what brings out the snark in us all:

That's an awful lot of commas, especially for guys we've never heard of... good thing the game is growing, eh?  Here's the aforementioned Shack snark:

Congrats to Joe Steranka for a 6&5 win over Dick Rugge in the Going Away Package Classic, while Zink and Moorhouse continue to collect generous pay for telling Commissioner Farquaad what a great job he's doing. And that David Pillsbury makes more money than Mike Whan or Mike Davis or Mike the cartboy at TPC Sawgrass is just plain wrong.

 Gotta nominate Mike Davis for most underpaid, given that he actually makes a contribution to the game.  The amount of coin available at Fortress Ponte Vedra is both staggering and expected, but I'm sure the struggling PGA professionals would be excited to know that has-been PGA of America officials maintain an existence-level sinecure long after their actual service ceases.

And for those that enjoy such things, Shack's Farquaad reference comes from the Shrek movies, though strangely enough Louis Oosthuizen is denied a spot in the top fifty.  I've mostly stuck with my Ratched bit, though I do enjoy when Geoff goes for a new reference, though his apogee was no doubt Commissioner Le Pétomane.

And as we're on the subject of fartists (another world-class segue, if I do say so myself), I found this chart of interest as well:

Not horrible for a guy with the yips.  But can someone explain how he made $610,000 on course in 2014, when I can't remember him making a cut?

I Don't Need To Know - Matthew Ruddy pens a recurring feature at The Loop titled How He Hit That, typically relating to some especially good ball striking.  Not so much this week:

Like "yips," "shank" is a word PGA Tour players don't even like to say, never mind actually do.

Ian Poulter can avoid saying "shank" if he chooses, but video from the final round at the Honda tells the story. On the tee at the par-3, 174-yard fifth hole, Poulter shanked his 8-iron dead right. The ball bounced on the cart path and into the water, leading to a double bogey that dropped him from the lead permanently. He ended up shooting 74 and missing the Padraig Harrington-Daniel Berger playoff by a shot.

"Tour players usually hit a shank--when the ball hits the hosel and comes off sideways--when they apply force a little differently in the downswing, like trying to hit it harder or softer," says 50 Best Teacher Brian Manzella. "Poulter said after his round that the shank--and some of the other bad shots he hit--came when he was trying to take something off it."

I can see your lips moving, but all I hear is blah, blah blah....

RIP, Jay Morish -  We lost one of the interesting men in the business of designing golf courses:

Morish on the right, with Rees Jones and Bill Campbell.

After graduating from Colorado State University in 1964 with a degree in landscape and nursery management, Morrish taught horticulture at the university before landing a job on the construction team at Robert Trent Jones-designed Spyglass Hill. It was the start of a career that would span five decades and bring Morrish into partnerships with several of the best-known figures in the field. 

In 1967, following a tenure as construction superintendent on Jones’ courses, Morrish worked with George Fazio and Desmond Muirhead. He then signed on as a designer with Jack Nicklaus in 1972. After 10 years with Nicklaus, Morrish teamed up with Tom Weiskopf. Their partnership lasted 12 years and produced more than two dozen courses, including Loch Lomond in Scotland and TPC Las Colinas in Irving, Texas.

Weiskopf's best work was in conjunction with Morish, and I was upset that he didn't get his due with all the fanfare over the redesign (misguided in several respects) of TPC Scottsdale.  But I didn't know of his involvement with Spyglass...

Doral Doings -  Not much news out of Miami, though the Great Scott (redundancy alert) is in the building....errr, in a manner of speech.

Since we last saw Adam Scott in a PGA Tour arena, some changes have graced his life.

Namely, daughter Bo Vera, delivered by Scott’s wife, Marie Kojzar, on Feb. 15 in Australia. 

Oh, and the conventional putter that he used for Tuesday’s practice round on the Blue Monster at Trump National Doral. 

Now it’s true that the conventional putter is a far less life-altering and heartwarming addition, but Scott understands the complexion of his livelihood. His favored method of putting – the anchored stroke, with a long putter – will be banned at the end of this year, so Scott knows a change is necessary.

Interesting, as I had Scott pegged as a dead-ender.  He was about as dreadful a putter as imaginable without anchoring, but admittedly that was before the day of Super Stroke grips and counter-balanced putters...

This Week in Nepotism -  I like this sort of thing, Mike Van Sickle's diary of a Monday qualifier:

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—It’s like deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra once said. So much so that I’m half expecting to turn the next corner and see Denzel Washington standing there. (If you missed that movie, never mind.) 

Once again I tied for fifth in a PGA Tour Monday qualifier (or The Race to Four, as I like to call it), this time for the Puerto Rico Open. You might recall that I also finished fifth in the Monday qualifier for the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines; I shot seven under par on the back nine that day but came up a shot short.

That's the thing about Monday qualifying, par is bupkis.   he shoots a tidy 29 and comes up short...

If the name rings a bell, h's the spawn of Gary Van Cynical, though we'd need to see him with the hat removed to know whether he was adopted.

A Class Action Sans Class - I was anxiously awaiting this news, because if the issue is caddie bibs who ya gonna call?

Steve Williams has become the first big-name caddie to acknowledge joining a lawsuit by the Association of Professional Tour Caddies against the PGA Tour, according to a Golfchannel.com report Tuesday morning. 

“I don’t think the Tour has treated the caddies in a correct manner for a long time,” Williams told GolfChannel.com from his home in New Zealand. “I think this is a good starting point to get the Tour and the caddies in a better stead.”

Please, he prefers to be called Stevie.

Texas lawyer Gene Egdorf, attorney for the caddies, tells Golf.com Williams is one of “more than 60” additional caddies who have come forward to join the suit, which Egdorf says will be amended in U.S. District Court in San Francisco in the next two weeks. All told, Egdorf said, there will be “somewhere around 150 plaintiffs” lining up against the Tour.

You're gonna need a bigger boat steel enclosure for lightning storms.  So, why is this amusing me?

According to one longtime caddie who is part of the suit, the legal wrangling began over the caddies’ attempt to self-fund a retirement and health-care benefits program by selling advertising on a small patch affixed to their bibs. When the Tour balked at the idea, this caddie says, “We didn’t really have a choice” but to take the Tour to court.

Williams has chosen to step away from the Tour this year but he is perhaps the most famous caddie in golf. He was part of 13 of Tiger Woods’ 14 major victories and most recently worked for Adam Scott. Williams told Golfchannel.com he has been fined $500 several times for taking off his bib prior to the conclusion of a round. He said it was part of a pattern of behavior by the Tour that made him feel like a “second-class citizen.”

Stevie's signature move was to take off his bib before his client putted out on the final green in his victories....well, that and breaking cameras.

Dominoes, Down -  I thought that for scheduling reasons that Royal Troon would be first, but this will surprise absolutely no one:

One of the three clubs on the British Open rota with a male-only membership policy has voted to allow female members for the first time. 

Royal St. George's, which last hosted golf's oldest major in 2011, said on Wednesday more than 81 percent of the club's full members took part in a ballot, and 90 percent voted in favor of women being eligible for membership.

Muirfield will be the last holdout, as tweed-clad geriatrics will man the ramparts with a glass of Kümmel in each clenched fist.

History, Repeating? - No, I'm not predicting that Steve Webster will win on the PGA Tour this week, because as far as I know Mr. Webster will not be in Puerto Rico. For those confused, the last two winners on the PGA tour, James Hahn and Padraig Harrington, both were ranked No. 297 at the time of their wins, a statistical oddity to say the least.

But it's this that is the subject of my musing:

In February, Australian Richard Green made the craziest hole-in-one you'll ever see on apar 4 at the Oates Victorian Championship on the PGA Tour of Australasia. But unfortunately for the three-time European Tour winner, the rarest form of albatross came a day before the tournament started.

And now, less than a month later, it's happened again. 

This time it was Henrik Norlander pulling off the trick in a pro-am ahead of the Cartagena de Indias at Karibana Championship on the Web.com Tour. 

OK, not so awfully sad for Green, as he went on to win the event (as did his fiancee in the women's event held concurrently).  So, in your Euro Tour fantasy league, do you take Webster or Norlander?  Why take chances, I'd suggest going with both.

This Week in Commercials - ESPN has been doing great things with their Masters promos.  The prior one with Bubba reading his invitation was notable, as is this peak at the Champions' Locker Room:

But this Nike ad makes me strangely sad for Tiger, who seems diminished by it:

I'd like to see the ad agency pitch for this.....let's see, we've got our current meal tickets such as Rory and Michelle, and we've mixed them in with the old news of Barkley and Bo.  And I'm sorry, which is Tiger?

One last advertising note, Shack regretfully informs us that our long national nighmare is ongoing:

You know what that means? We’ll have another six months of the Guantanamo-ready piece even though it had grown insufferable within days of its debut. 

But as Golf News Net notes, if history is any gauge, we'll have another six months to detect some sort of hidden genius behind the campaign since Omega only does one golf ad a year. 

Either way, please, please make sure you have fresh batteries all so you never experience the hitting the mute button only to find your remote has lost all juice from repeated MUTE use.

 But I'm standing in the hall of fame and the world's gonna know my name....really, I can quite any time.

And, as long as we're throwing up videos, how about this high-production-value trick shot video from Shack?  Now one caveat, even though it's labelled Dude Perfect, I am not in it:

Lots of great stuff featuring long-drive hero Jamie Sadlowski... when they hit driver off the deck, they really mean deck.  Though oddly enough, I've got a bag of Skittles sitting on my desk as I type...

Wacky Weekend Wrap

You'd think a world renown golf blogger would be safe to schedule travel on a Monday morning, but you'd be wrong.  Terribly, horribly, disastrously wrong....But who is this world renown golf blogger you speak of?

Paddy Power - Sometimes we get it right and other times we miss the mark.  In discounting Padraig Harrington's chances at the Honda I would say  that I got it quite right about his game, I just didn't factor in that he'd be so contagious to the rest of the field.

Before we get too deep into the snark I should note that I saw Paddy sink a putt to tie at -7 with Poulter and Reed at the Salt Lake Delta Sky Club, then had to pack up the iPad and board.  So we'll rely on Doug Ferguson's game story:

Lost in all the collapses down the stretch was that the 43-year-old veteran was five shots

Still the best overbite in golf.

behind with eight holes to play when he hooked his tee shot and dropped his head walking off the 11th hole. It was enough left of the fairway to find a patch of muddied grass that had been trampled by the gallery, and he played a bold shot to a right flag over the water to 15 feet for birdie. That's where Poulter went into the water, and the three-shot swing meant Harrington was back in the game. 

He followed with a 35-foot birdie on the 12th, a 7-foot birdie on the 13th and a 15-foot putt on the 14th for his fourth straight birdie and a share of the lead when Reed holed from 18 feet right before him.

That doesn't capture the final sequence, when he horribly dunked his tee ball on No. 17 to make double but rolled a 16-footer in on No. 18 to salvage the day.  Doug has a good summary of the other various collapses if you're in a train wreck kind of mood.

Brian Wacker captures Paddy's struggles since 2008 here, including a bout of the "Y" word:

Whatever physical tinkering he had done with his swing, not seeing the results he’d hoped for had crept into the mental side of his game and in 2012 he suffered the yips.

“As a lot of people who win major tournaments, you look back at them and you try and live up to them, play up to them,” Harrington said. “I just got very intolerant of my mental game, my focus. 

“When you get (the yips), it's really frustrating, it's really hard. You don't know what to do. You grind your way through it and it is a tough thing to get through. 

“But yeah, there's no doubt low points in those years, because you know, in 2008, 2009, I'm very much in the penthouse. I wasn't quite down to the doghouse but not far away from it.”

Now Paddy's struggle with his concentration should take no one by surprise, because he's famously willing to try ANYTHING.  And he'll do it at any time, as Shack showed us in his warm-up before the conclusion of yesterday's final round:

I can see doing the Happy Gilmore thing as a footwork drill or to help with timing or any

number of swing issues.

But with a rubber-band around the knees? While you're contending in a tour event? With people watching?Were all the straitjackets taken?

Shack has the video of the Morning Drive gang chortling over this.  And speaking of straightjackets, and how's that for a segue, Luke Kerr-Dineen reminds us that Paddy left no stone unturned in his quest for perfection:

"I was so angry...I put my arms in my sweater and ripped one of the sleeves off,"Rapcavage said. "I jammed both by arms in one of the sleeves and almost immediately I started thinking: 'hey, this actually feels kind of good.'"

The product that came out of that semi-destructive process is called the Golf Swing Shirt, which is essentially just a spandex golf shirt with one sleeve. Rapcavage managed to get it into the hands of a few different tour pros, and one of them -- Padraig Harrington -- liked it so much that he agreed to become the face of the product.

Here's what that looked like:

Combine the Swing Shirt with the Happy Gilmore Theraband drill and you've really got something there.  And, while I don't usually have much interest in the ubiquitous WITB (What's In The Bag) features, but this WITB is very much a WTF:

Ball: Titlist Pro V1x
Driver: TaylorMade AeroBurner (Mitsubishi Kuro Kage Silver 60 TX, 9 degrees
Driver: TaylorMade SLDR Mini, 12 degrees
3-wood: TaylorMade SLDR, 15 degrees
Hybrid: Wilson D100, 19 degrees
Irons (4): Wilson FG Tour V4; (5-PW): Wilson FG Tour V2
Wedges: Wilson FG Tour (52 degrees); Ping Eye2 Gorge (60 degrees)
Putter: Wilson Infinite South Side

Where to start?  I'm not sure which is stranger, the two drivers or the Ping Eye2 wedge, both of which make it seem that he's channeling his inner Phil (and how about that 8 degree gap in his wedges?).   If I remember correctly, the Ping Eye2 has the non-conforming grooves but was grandfathered in as legal as part of the settlement with Karsten.  There aren't too many to be found, but I recall Phil using one just to, you know, make a point.

The Poultergeist - We all love a good train wreck, and this was a classic of the genre.  But let me start with a brief digression about Johnny Miller.  Miller is not everyone's cup of tea, though I've always thought the positives outweigh the negatives.  And he's not Nick Faldo, which is saying a lot...

He's always been a stream of consciousness broadcaster, seemingly saying whatever pops into his mind.  There's no flow to his commentary, as he just kind of blurts things out that may or may not provide knowledge to the viewer.  As he's gotten older the words and thoughts don't come as easily and the whole process seems increasingly disjointed, putting tremendous pressure on Dan Hicks to keep Johnny tethered to reality.

That said, credit must be paid to Johnny for his work on Sunday.  No sooner had he opined that Poulter might not be able to hold on, than he cold-shanked is tee shot on the 5th and followed that double by smother-hooking his tee shot on No. 6 into the water.  Here's video of the shank, not suitable for the faint-of-heart:

Now, one might have thought that the suspension of play would allow this veteran to regroup and he came to the 14th tee the next day tied for the lead, whereupon hilarity ensued:

It doesn't read any better than it looks:

After a birdie on the eighth hole to open Monday, Poulter splashed his approach on 11

and made double-bogey. He then put back-to-back shots in the water on 14 to record a triple bogey. (He even went in the bunker on 14 before making a 19-footer to save triple.) During the NBC telecast, Johnny Miller questioned whether Poulter would have enough balls to finish the round.

Usually when Johnny discusses balls, he's not speaking of, you know, golf balls...Our Poults is a weird one, a very borderline Tour rabbit that's difficult to reconcile with the guy with the big "S" on his chest from Medinah.  For those keeping score at home, he put five balls in the aqua in his final round, and one doesn't win doing that.  Then, just because, he birdies Nos. 17 and 18 to finish a mere one shot out of the playoff.  Just because...

Rory Rebounds - Fresh off his lackluster play and missed cut at the Honda, Rory quickly found his game and secured his third straight major:

Rory McIlroy didn't take long to rebound from missing the cut at theHonda Classic.

The world No. 1 scorched venerable Seminole Golf Club on Monday to claim gross-division honors at the Seminole Pro-Member paired with John Pinkham. 

McIlroy, who missed the cut in his 2015 debut on the PGA Tour with rounds of 73-74 last week at PGA National, began his day with three consecutive birdies and went out in 6-under 30. The Ulsterman shot 63 on his own ball.

The weird thing is that Phil made it to Seminole after finishing his fourth round at PGA National in the morning.  I don't know anything about the set-up for the pros, but even if they played from the ladies' tees a 63 at Seminole is golfing your ball.

A Retraction Land Speed Record - News broke yesterday that Tiger was suspended for use of PED's.  The disclosure admittedly came from an unlikely source, a guy that had a cup of coffee on Tour named Dan Olsen.  Here's the full interview conducted by David "Mad Dog" Demarco:

By now you know that Olsen has ignominiously retracted the entire interview, apologizing to Tiger, Nike, the Tour, Phil, and Commissioner Ratched.  But if you have twelve minutes free to walk into the long grass, it covers Lance Armstrong, untested golf balls, the commencement of drug testing one month after Tiger's last major....everything short of a second gunman on the grassy knoll.

Now this shouldn't have seen the light of day, given the source.  Here's Shack's take on it:

Besides the loopy description of his source (worth listening to just for the giggle), things

crumbled fast when Olsen mentioned a one-month term. The interviewer should have asked if there was such thing in the PGA Tour's drug policy guidelines (there is not).

Anyway, this kind of stuff certainly will always be out there when Dr. Anthony Galea made 14 in-house visits, but you'd like to think WVFN would have been more discerning.

True that, as the link to Galea has never been adequately explained.  But the beauty of stories like these is that they sometimes result in a crack in the moat at Fort Ponte Vedra Beach:

Reaction was swift after Olsen's comments were widely reported Monday. 

From Ty Votaw, executive vice president of the PGA Tour: "There is no truth whatsoever to these claims. We categorically deny these allegations."

I'm sorry, I understood that it was the policy of the Tour to NOT comment on disciplinary actions.  As with the DJ story, it now appears that anything not specifically denied by the Tour suits can be assumed to be accurate.  And I'll leave you with this tease from Geoff:

There are some fun stories floating around about Olsen and the Commish. If I can get a couple of more sources, I'll do my best to share! But for now, he should go back to his birther and truther DG's.

There's little that we here at Unplayable Lies enjoy more than fun stories involving the Commish.  So we'll stay tuned... 

Honda Hiatus

Don't we just love Florida golf?  

No doubt you turned on your sets yesterday at 3:00 to find out that it was end days.... For those suffering in the Northeast and Midwest, here's video of someone else's misfortune:

Now, don't you feel just a little bit better?  No need to thank me.... And how about this air bubble that appeared on the 18th green?

We get those on our eighth fairway.... it's like walking on a trampoline.  Here's another view of 18 green, that white thingee being their formerly floating scoreboard:

Word is that they received five inches of rain necessitating a massive clean-up that will delay the resumption of play until 10 a.m. Sunday.  They'll use every trick in the book, including split tees and no re-pairing after the third round, and still won't finish.  Big deal, you say, they're only heading down the road to Doral, so what's the worry?

Alas, this is a potential disaster that will cause many of our heroes to miss the first major of the year.  Gary Van Sickle with the explication:

The Honda Classic needs to finish on Sunday or risk bumping into a major championship on Monday -- the pro-member tournament at nearby Seminole Golf Club, which a lot of Tour players look forward to and really is a big deal…

Shack gives us this link to the way-back machine to remind us that last year's Seminole event features six of the top ten players in the world.  Of course, Van Cynical closed his piece with this:

When play was called for the day Saturday afternoon an hour before the second-rounder leaders were scheduled to go to the tee, missing the cut at the Honda Classic suddenly didn't seem like such a bad break…

True 'dat!  I did watch quite a bit of the Thursday/Friday coverage from PGA National and had a mercifully small number of observations:

• I found Thursday afternoon's play in the strong winds to be quite fascinating, in a ghoulish train-wreck kind of way.  In that kind of wind there's almost no way to get around that punitive golf course without disaster.  It's a wonder that Charl Schwartzel or another unlucky soul that drew a late-early pairing didn't run out of ammo.
• The weather gave a significant advantage to the early-late groups, making Patrick Reed's performance all the more impressive.  And he put on a shot-making clinic out there. 
• Rory played dreadfully, but on one Par-4 he gunned a drive 331 yards....and was away.  Amusing, but when you play with DJ and Brooks Koepka that's gonna happen...
• Speaking of Brooksie, kudos for the bounce-back from Thursday's 78 with a Friday 64.  Picked up almost a shot per hole....

Padraig Harrington's name atop the leaderboard has Mart firing up the flux capacitor and setting it for 2007, such as this:

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. -- The Padraig Harrington who won three major

championships in a span of six contested about 100 years ago has reemerged at the Honda Classic, still unsure and a bit unsteady, but possessing a growing sureness that his relative steadiness can be sustained. 

Brilliant for 27 holes on the caustic Champion Course at PGA National, Harrington struggled over his inward nine and bogeyed his final two holes. Still, he completed a 4-under-par 66 Saturday to lead resourceful youngster Patrick Reed with a 7-under 133 total midway through a rain-plagued tournament destined for a Monday finish.

Now there's a statistical oddity that has folks abuzz.  Paddy is currently ranked 297th in the world, not especially promising except for the fact that the prior occupant of that slot, one James Hahn, won last week.  Still, color me cynical, as in van Cynical, who had this in the item linked above:

Honda 36-hole leader Harrington is the runaway leader in sponsor exemptions on the PGA Tour this year. Harrington, a former British Open and PGA champion, has already received seven exemptions to play. Before Honda, he had made only two cuts and won just over $26,000 using those exemptions. Now it’s looking like a pretty good call giving Harrington a spot…

Everything regresses to the mean....and Paddy's mean these days is quite....you know, mean.  Dave Shedloski had this summary of the carnage:

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. -- Well, the chamber of horrors that is the Champion Course at PGA National sure doesn't play favorites. As proof, many of the favorites aren't playing the Champion Course this weekend in the Honda Classic. 

Half of the field had yet to complete the second round because of nearly four hours of weather delays Friday, but the plethora of marquee players turning in their courtesy cars early was startling. Justin Rose, Billy Horschel, Dustin Johnson, Charl Schwartzel and Ernie Els were among the certain casualties, while Lee Westwood and Graeme McDowell found themselves with ground to make up to survive the 36-hole cut when play resumes Saturday morning, weather permitting. 

Most shocking of all, however, was the thoroughly uninspired effort of world No. 1 Rory McIlroy, who had come into this event, his first this year on the PGA Tour, riding a wave that had begun with his victory in last year's Open Championship at Royal Liverpool.

Most of those big names just happened to be in the less fortunate late-early waves that caught the worst of the weather.  But I'd suggest that we shouldn't be all that surprised by Rory's flame-out, as despite some improvement he remains a surprisingly poor wind player, surprising given his passport.  He's also a very inconsistent player, more Phil than Tiger if you will.

Lastly, with a lawsuit filed you'd be excused for supposin' that the Tour might not want to give the caddies any further recruiting tolls.  You'd be wrong, of course, but still logical:

Earlier this month, PGA Tour caddies filed a $50 million class-action lawsuit against the

tour. And what happened on Saturday at the Honda Classic certainly isn't going to make that go away. 

As severe thunderstorms hit PGA National, play was suspended -- and ultimately, postponed -- sending players and fans to seek shelter. But while players huddled in the clubhouse, caddies, who aren't given clubhouse access during PGA Tour events, had to take cover in a metal shed on the course.

A steel shed during a lightning storm?  What could ever go wrong?  Caddies are not allowed in the clubhouse during tour events, which sounds like something out of the Harry Vardon era.  

I'll be traveling home tomorrow, so we'll catch up on Tuesday.  Good thing the Honda won't finish until Monday...